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Tag: airport security
Washington To Tighten Security For U.S.-Bound Flights

Washington To Tighten Security For U.S.-Bound Flights

Washington (AFP) — U.S. authorities plan to bolster security at some airports in Europe and the Middle East with direct flights to the United States, officials said.

Amid concern terror groups are developing new explosives to circumvent airport security, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced unspecified steps that would be carried out in “the coming days,” without saying which airports would be affected.

“We are sharing recent and relevant information with our foreign allies and are consulting the aviation industry,” Johnson said in a statement.

After an assessment of security threats, Johnson said he had directed the Transportation Security Administration “to implement enhanced security measures in the coming days at certain overseas airports with direct flights to the United States.”

Johnson said that “we will continue to adjust security measures to promote aviation security without unnecessary disruptions to the traveling public.”

The airports were located in the Middle East and Europe, according to an official at the Department of Homeland Security, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The announcement came before the country’s Independence Day celebrations on Friday but officials would not say whether authorities had uncovered a specific threat or plot.

“There will be enhanced security measures in certain airports that fly non stop to the U.S.,” the DHS official told AFP.

“We’re targeting certain airports abroad . . based on real time intelligence,” the official added.

The new measures would be designed in a way to avoid creating major hassles for travelers, without signaling to potential terrorists what those steps would be, officials said.

“Information about specific enhancements is sensitive as we do not wish to divulge information about specific layers of security to those who would do harm,” said a second DHS official, who asked not to be named.

The official said authorities “may require some additional screening of persons and their property, so travelers should always arrive at an airport with plenty of time for screening to be sure they do not miss their flights.”

Media reports said the additional screening could apply to shoes worn by passengers and electronic devices.

U.S. counter-terrorism experts in recent months have said there is cause for concern that extremists have come up with new tactics to avoid detection at airports.

AFP Photo / Johannes Eisele

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Teen Stowaway’s Footprints, Handprints Found On Wheel Well Doors, Tire

Teen Stowaway’s Footprints, Handprints Found On Wheel Well Doors, Tire

By Joseph Serna and Kate Mather, Los Angeles Times

Images of footprints and handprints inside the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45 jetliner appear to bolster the fantastic story of a Santa Clara teenager who reportedly survived a frigid, perilous journey cooped up inside as a stowaway.

The images, including of a footprint on the tire below the wheel well, were taken by Hawaii News Now, and appear to support the boy’s story of surviving the 5-hour flight from San Jose while enduring sub-zero temperatures and deathly thin air.

Authorities said it was a miracle the 15-year-old boy survived in the wheel well, as oxygen was limited at the jet’s cruising altitude of 38,000 feet, and the temperature could have dropped to 50 degrees below zero or lower.

He then managed to stay in the wheel well when the bay doors opened twice in the air.

“The more remarkable thing from a science and medical standpoint — how did he survive the plane? How does he not fall out?” said Armand Dorian, associate clinical professor of emergency medicine at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital who treated a wheel well stowaway in 2000. “You can survive all those things, but how do you prop yourself into that thing?”

Only 25 of the 105 people who have attempted to stow away in the wheel wells of planes in the last 67 years have survived the ordeal, according to FAA records. Those who do not fall or freeze to death can be crushed by moving landing gear or die from lack of oxygen.

Hawaiian Airlines spokeswoman Alison Coyle said the wheel well doors open twice during typical flights — about one mile after takeoff to stow the landing gear, and three to five miles before landing to free it.

“I don’t think he could pull it off twice, luck was on his side,” Dorian said. “I almost think you got to give this guy a medal just for surviving this.”

A spokeswoman with Hawaii’s Department of Human Services this week said the boy was resting comfortably in a hospital and is preparing to go home to Santa Clara. Authorities in Hawaii and California say they don’t plan to charge the teen with trespassing and are instead focused on how he accomplished his journey without being caught.

According to a federal law enforcement source who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the case, a security camera at the airport recorded video of a person coming over a perimeter fence at the airport just after 1 a.m. Sunday.

The Hawaiian Airlines flight didn’t take off until about six hours later, indicating that the boy apparently went undetected for hours.

Brian Jenkins, an aviation security expert at Rand Corp., said that only the boy would be able to fully account for his actions leading up to the flight.

“From where he went over the fence to where that plane was, where was he in between that period of time?” Jenkins said. “Was he in contact with other people? And does that represent another point of failure?”

AFP Photo/Patrick Baz

Teen Stowaway To Be Sent Back To San Jose After Jet Ride To Hawaii

Teen Stowaway To Be Sent Back To San Jose After Jet Ride To Hawaii

By Joseph Serna and Kate Mather, Los Angeles Times

Officials in Hawaii are preparing to send a Santa Clara teenager home after he reportedly stowed away in the wheel well of a jetliner departing San Jose.

Mineta San Jose International Airport officials said the 15-year-old managed to enter the airport, trek across the tarmac and climb into the Boeing 767’s rear left wheel well undetected and “under the cover of darkness” sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning.

The slight teenager, first seen on a security camera video, did not appear again until later Sunday morning, when airline workers spotted him 2,350 miles to the west, walking on the tarmac at Kahului Airport on the island of Maui.

The boy had run away from home, FBI officials in Hawaii said, and climbed aboard the jet without knowing where it was going. Though he could be arrested on suspicion of trespassing at the airport in San Jose, officials there say they aren’t planning on doing so.

Instead, authorities are busy trying to figure out how the teen so easily gained access to the jet and how he survived a perilous, 5 1/2-hour odyssey — enduring frigid temperatures, oxygen deprivation and a compartment unfit for human habitation — with so little apparent trauma.

Authorities said the temperature at the jet’s cruising altitude of 38,000 feet could have dropped to 50 degrees below zero or lower. Oxygen would have also been in painfully short supply at that altitude, about 9,000 feet higher than the summit of Mount Everest.

FBI spokesman Tom Simon said the boy apparently had been unconscious for the “lion’s share of the flight.”

Such ordeals do not usually end well. Those who do not fall to their death can be crushed by landing gear or succumb to cold and lack of oxygen. Federal Aviation Administration records show that of the 105 people who have stowed away on flights around the world over the last 67 years, 25 lived through the ordeal, a survival rate of 23.8 percent.

“He must have had the four-leaf clover in his hand or something,” said Jeff Price, an aviation security expert at Metropolitan State University in Denver.

Aviation security experts said it was troubling that the teen was able to bypass security and get to the plane undetected. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he wanted more answers, adding that the incident “demonstrates vulnerabilities that need to be addressed.”

Federal Transportation Security Administration officials said they planned to meet with law enforcement and airport authorities to review security after the incident, which experts noted could have been catastrophic had the stowaway been armed with explosives.

Officials said the teenager apparently had no malicious intent. The flight, carrying 212 passengers and 10 crew members, took off at 7:55 a.m. Sunday.

Soon after the plane landed at 10:31 a.m., airline workers spotted the stowaway and reported him to airport security. A Maui News photo showed him some time later sitting upright on a gurney, attended by paramedics, apparently alert and showing no obvious signs of his ordeal. He wore a sweat shirt with an orange hood.

Airport personnel in Hawaii said they had turned the boy over to Hawaii’s child protection office.

Shyb via Flickr

Teen Stowaway Raises Alarms About Airport Security

Teen Stowaway Raises Alarms About Airport Security

By Kate Mather, Joseph Serna and Kurt Streeter, Los Angeles Times

A teenager who stowed away on a flight from San Jose to Hawaii is raising questions about security at San Jose’s Mineta International Airport.

Authorities say security video shows the teen from Santa Clara hopping a fence at the San Jose airport and climbing into the wheel well of a jetliner.

It’s unclear how long the boy was on the tarmac and why security officials didn’t detect he was there.

The 16-year-old survived the flight.

Brian Jenkins, an aviation security expert at Rand Corp., said security requirements for airport perimeters have steadily increased through the years to prevent unauthorized people or vehicles from getting near aircraft. Sunday’s intrusion raised concerns about access, he said, and whether the teenager’s actions could inspire someone else who “could do something truly dreadful.”

“Why this young man wanted to stow away and go to Hawaii, for crying out loud, who knows?” he said. “But that said, it just will underscore the concerns because people will say, well, if a 16-year-old can get onto the wheel well, then someone who has more malevolent objectives … can get there for the purposes of sabotage.”

Another concern, Jenkins said, was why the teenager wasn’t stopped after airport security cameras caught him hopping the fence.

“If he was on the camera, why wasn’t there a response? Was no one watching the monitors?” Jenkins asked. “The first question will be, gee, the cameras work, the response didn’t. Was it just missed and they went back and searched through that time frame and, oops, there he is?”

Jenkins said the breach would likely prompt a review of perimeter security not just in San Jose but at airports across the United States. One of the main questions, he said, would be whether an adequate system failed or whether upgrades are needed.

“Everyone will tighten up. I suspect everyone will be going up a notch just as a consequence of this,” he said. “There will be some reviews of technologies and procedures — was this just, gee, the system is in place but it didn’t work this time or is it: Do we need to do more?”

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Hayward, said on Twitter that he is concerned about the security issues. “I have long been concerned about security at our airport perimeters. #Stowaway teen demonstrates vulnerabilities that need to be addressed,” he wrote.

San Jose airport officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The 16-year-old had run away from home when he climbed the fence on Sunday morning and crawled into the left rear wheel well of Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45.

“He was not planning on going to Hawaii,” said FBI Honolulu spokesman Tom Simon. “He just got on a plane.”

Authorities called it a “miracle” that the teen survived the 5-hour flight. The wheel well of the Boeing 767 is not pressurized or heated, meaning the teen possibly endured extremely thin air and temperatures as low 80 degrees below zero when it cruised at 38,000 feet.

“How he survived, I don’t know,” Simon said. The boy was unconscious for most of the flight, Simon added.

“I imagine he must have blacked out at about 10,000 feet,” he said. “The air is pretty thin up there.”

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane’s steady climb to high altitudes may allow a person to drift into unconsciousness as oxygen becomes scarce. And as the heat dissipates from the wheel well, a stowaway can develop hypothermia, a condition that preserves the central nervous system. Both hypoxia and hypothermia may resolve as the plane gradually descends for landing, the FAA said.

Authorities are still investigating how much of this came into play with the teen who was found on the tarmac at Maui’s Kahului Airport.

The plane landed at Maui’s Kahului Airport at 10:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, but Simon said the teen did not regain consciousness for an additional hour. Once he woke up, he hopped down to the tarmac.

Hawaiian Airlines personnel noticed the teen on a ramp and notified security, airline spokeswoman Alison Croyle said in a statement released Sunday night.

“Our primary concern now is the well-being of the boy, who is exceptionally lucky to have survived,” the statement said.

Simon said the teen had run away from home. There was no indication that he posed a threat to the airline, and he has not been charged with a crime, officials said.

He cleared a medical checkup and was handed over to officials from the Hawaii Department of Human Services. Officials did not release his name because he is a minor.

Rosemary Barnes, a spokeswoman at the San Jose airport, said the FBI and Transportation Security Administration were investigating how the teen breached security and made it onto the plane but could provide no further comment.

The teen’s case is extreme, but it’s not the first time a stowaway has survived a flight in the wheel well of an aircraft.

In August 2013, a teenage boy from Nigeria endured a 35-minute trip in the wheel well of a domestic flight that landed in Lagos. Officials credited the trip’s short flight time and relatively low altitude with helping him survive.

On another occasion, a stowaway managed to survive a flight from Havana to Madrid, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

But in 2012, the body of a 26-year-old stowaway was found crumpled on a suburban London street. Officials believe he had climbed aboard a British Airways plane in Angola and was either dead or near death as he fell from the wheel well during the plane’s descent into Heathrow Airport.

Photo: Shyb via Flickr